PEORIA — Law enforcement officials are highlighting diminished violent crime statistics ahead of a new round of enforcement actions for the Don’t Shoot anti-gun violence initiative.

The program, which began in August 2012 and is patterned after a concept coined by criminologist David Kennedy of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, will feature the next call-in of targeted violent offenders Aug. 20.

That meeting, considered the centerpiece of the initiative, will include a twist on the initiative’s previous focus on groups of offenders, Peoria County State’s Attorney Jerry Brady said at a news conference Monday.

While previous call-ins have brought in several members of the same gang to deliver a message that gun violence will no longer be tolerated, Don’t Shoot in Peoria is now evolving to target specific members of different groups who are considered the most violent in addition to working on the group dynamic, Brady said.

“That is a major component of the Don’t Shoot program,” Brady said. “Now we will be focusing as well, through the U.S. Attorney’s Office, on a weekly basis, to review those individuals we believe to be the most violent offenders, so we can send the message to them.”

Added Tate Chambers, the assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of Illinois: “We decided the problem in our community was gangs, so we went there first. Now what we’re doing is adding the most violent offender strategy to the gang strategy.”

Assistant Police Chief Mike Eddlemon and Mayor Jim Ardis pointed to a 59 percent reduction in shooting victims for the year through Sunday compared to the same period in 2010 as evidence that the Don’t Shoot effort has had a positive effect on violence in the city. Fatal shootings have decreased by 71 percent over the same time frames, statistics presented at the news conference showed.

“The focused deterrence model is having some success, and the longer we employ these strategies, the more focused we are on identifying the people who are attempting to terrorize our community,” Ardis said. “Don’t Shoot is not the only reason for the reduction, but we’re cautiously optimistic that Don’t Shoot is having a strong impact on the numbers we’re seeing.”

Eddlemon said the police decided to compare the first part of 2014 to 2010 — a year the city ultimately tied the record number of 23 homicides and included a wave of violence in the spring and summer that forced police to institute highly visible saturation patrols in South Peoria — because the level of violence that year caused officials to rethink the approach to violent crime and adopt Kennedy’s methods.

Page 2 of 2 - “It was really the beginning of (officials thinking) ‘What are we going to do about this? How are we going to respond to this? We can’t arrest our way out of this,’ ” Eddlemon said. “We want to be proactive.”